Vodafone and Aircel have started talks with the government on how to speed up the much delayed national broadband project. The government recently setup a committee on NOFN to fastrack the project. The NOFN project has assumed greater importance after the announcement in August of the Digital India initiative, a programme to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.

A way is to get private companies lay down optic fibre in the second phase of NOFN, which aims at providing broadband connectivity to 250,000 panchayats by December 2016 at an estimated cost of Rs 30,000 crore.

Aircel had a workshop with the DoT and Bharat Broadband Network officials on how they can collaborate on the project and what they should do to build the high-speed data network. BBNL, a special purpose vehicle set up by the government in 2012 is responsible for management and operations of NOFN under the administrative control of the Ministry of IT and Communications. The NOFN project, which was initially estimated to cost Rs 20,100 crore and was approved by the Cabinet in October 2011, is running behind schedule and has seen a cost overrun of 75% because of delays…See more

Advertisements

Like this:

It is the first time ever when the Indian smartphone market shrunk following a piling up of inventories by handset makers at the start of the October-December period. However, Samsung continued to maintain its leading position in the smartphone market with 22% share in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Smartphones made up 35% of the overall mobile phone business in the country, which was nearly 3 times of its share in the same quarter of 2013. In Q4 2014, the smartphone market declined 4 percent while the feature phone market dipped 14 percent over Q3 2014.

Apple has posted a tough competition to the Korean consumer electronics brand Samsung in Q4. According to IDC, online exclusive brands are hurting the Samsung brand in value for money category.

Intex came out as the third largest smart phone vendor in India with 8% share, surpassing Lava during this Quarter. Lava however remains stable with a good amount of visibility of its distributers…See more

Like this:

Following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, the coming fiscal will see the states getting more money as the Centre decides to give 10% more funding from its divisible resource. Keeping the federal structure of the country intact, the Government accepted the Finance Commission Report, thus informing the Chief Ministers of the states about this new move.

The Commission, headed by former RBI Governor YV Reddy, submitted its report on December 15 that suggested passing 42% of net tax receipt to the states. Though this will mean a big drain on the finances of the Centre, the recommendation of finance commission is for changing the revenue-sharing between the Centre and the State. It has recommended a grant of over 1.94 lakh crore to meet the deficit of 11 States…See more

These notifications can alert advertisers to things like ads that are coming up for expiration, when you’re nearing a spending limit, or other ad performance metrics, like Page Likes or how your ad it compares to other similar ad sets….See more

Like this:

With a target to bring digital literacy to over one lakh Indians, the NASSCOM Foundation has launched the Digital Literacy Week. This initiative, a part of the National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM), will complement the government’s vision to empower at least one person per household with critical digital literacy skills by 2020.

The National Digital Literacy Mission is a far-sighted, dynamic and integrated platform of digital literacy awareness, education and capacity programmes that will help rural and the underserved communities fully participate in the global digital economy. The NASSCOM Foundation is the industry partner to the Government of India to accomplish the first phase goal for NDLM or “DISHA” by making 10 lakh individuals in India digitally literate in 18 months. This programme is expected to touch the lives of more than 250 million individuals over the next few years and aims at helping citizens adapt to the increasingly digital world.

According to Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation, “The three Rs of education, namely Reading, (W)Riting and (A)Rithmetic which were all the rage in the 60s are now passé. They have to be joined by a fourth pillar, namely Digital Literacy to function in this technology-driven world. The NASSCOM Foundation has been focussing on making technology central to enabling change and the Digital Literacy Week is a great way to unite the volunteering strength of the industry and create a nationwide Digital Literacy impact.”

The content for making a lakh Indians digitally literate comes in seven modules and is presently teachable in Hindi, English, Telugu and Kannada. The seven modules are Power in Your Hands, Internet, Email and Social Media, Useful Information, Government, E-commerce, and IT Security. Everyone going through these seven modules will be digitally empowered at the end of the course after passing an assessment conducted by NIELIT (National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology).See more

Like this:

The year ended on a positive note for the tablet market by having posted a strong growth in Q4 2014. The market has also witnessed a steady growth during the festive third quarter. According to IDC, India tablet market reported shipments of 0.96 million units in Q4, a quarter-on-quarter growth of 3.6%. Strong performance of local players as well as increasing interest of the PC OEMs in the tablets space contributed to the expansion of the market over Q3. The share of PC OEMs in the market has grown by more than double year-on-year.

7-inch tablets placed in less than $150 price band populate the market and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. While Android still has majority of the pie, we do see vendors exploring the 8”-9” windows form-factor.

Wi-Fi-enabled tablets have faced a steep decline over the quarters, losing out to connected tablets. The market is swiftly moving towards 3G connected tablets that posted a double-digit growth in Q4 and accounted for approximately 60% of the total shipments. Additionally, we expect 4G tablets to pick up as more service providers roll out their LTE spectrums by 2H 2015.See more

Like this:

HID Global has announced that its Identification Technologies division has launched its IronTag 206 RFID transponders that deliver the highest flame resistance rating available in a UHF tag. The transponder has a UL 94 V0 rating, which signifies that IronTag 206 units immediately self-extinguish when an ignition source is removed and will not drip particles that might cause flames to spread.

“Today, HID Global customers can use RFID tags in virtually any environment, enabling unprecedented insight into new areas for process control and improvement,” said Richard Aufreiter, Director of product management for Identification Technologies with HID Global. “IronTag 206 transponders deliver uncompromised performance in the form of a lightweight, high-temperature on-metal UHF tag with up to 16 times more user memory than most UHF tags today.”

Originally designed for tracking aircraft parts during assembly and maintenance, all IronTag transponders tolerate harsh conditions and are engineered for optimal performance when mounted on metal surfaces. The new IronTag 206 withstands temperature extremes, from -40° F (-40° C) up to 428° F (220° C). IronTags are available in versions optimized for E.U. standards (869 MHz) or U.S. standards (915 MHz), with options for large user memory ranging from 2176-bit up to a spacious 8192-bit.

The rugged IronTag 206 transponders deliver exceptional size-to-performance ratios. The tags are only 1.3 × 1.2 × 0.23 in (34 × 31 × 6 mm) in size and they deliver a read ranges up to 8.2 ft. (2.5 m) on metal. All IronTag units are waterproof and resistant to shock, vibration and chemical exposure. The tags can be affixed with screws, clamps or high-temperature stickers.See more